Dilworth Wayne Woolley

Dilworth Wayne Woolley (July 20, 1914 – July 23, 1966) was a Canadian-born American biochemist, who did important work on vitamin deficiency, and was one of the first to study the role of serotonin in brain chemistry. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1939, 1948, 1949, and 1950.

Dilworth Wayne Woolley
Born(1914-07-20)July 20, 1914
Raymond, Alberta Canada
DiedJuly 23, 1966(1966-07-23) (aged 52)
Cuzco, Peru
NationalityCanadian-American
OccupationBiochemist
Years active1939-1966
Spouse(s)Janet Ruth McCarter

Early life and education

Wayne Woolley was born in Raymond, Alberta, the son of Americans living in Canada. His extended family were prominent members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; his great-grandfather was Edwin Dilworth Woolley, was a prominent Latter-day Saint bishop in Salt Lake City.[1]

Wayne Woolley (as he was known) was a precocious child who finished high school at age 13, and completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Alberta at age 19. He pursued graduate studies in the department of agricultural chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, where he earned his PhD in 1939.[2] His graduate research with Conrad Elvehjem concerned nicotinic acid as a treatment for canine blacktongue, with implications for human pellagra.[3]

Career

Woolley spent much of his career at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City.[4] His major work focused on serotonin in brain chemistry: how substances such as LSD might affect the action of serotonin, how disorders of serotonin function might be responsible for mental disorders, and how serotonin might play a part in memory and learning.[5][6] Though his career was shorter-lived than expected, subsequent work by others has developed many of Woolley's hypotheses in productive directions.[7][8][9] One of his assistants, Robert Bruce Merrifield, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1984, for work on peptide synthesis they did together in the 1950s.[10]

In 1940 and in 1948, Woolley received Eli Lilly Awards from the American Chemical Society, for his research.[11][12][13] In 1952 he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences. He served as president of the Institute of Nutrition in 1959.[14]

Woolley was an author on over 200 research papers and book articles in his thirty-year career. Books by Woolley included A Study of Antimetabolites (1952),[15] and The Biochemical Bases of Psychoses (1962).[16]

Personal life

Woolley married bacteriologist Janet Ruth McCarter in 1945. Woolley had Diabetes mellitus type 1 from childhood, and in 1923 was among the first children to receive insulin to treat the condition. He nonetheless experienced blindness as a complication of his diabetes, and was completely blind from age 25 until his death from a heart attack at age 52, while hiking in Cuzco, Peru.[17][18]

A small collection of the papers of D. Wayne Woolley are at the Rockefeller University Archive Center.[19]

References
  1. Leonard J. Arrington, From Quaker to Latter-Day Saint: Bishop Edwin D. Woolley (Deseret Book Co. 1976). ISBN 9780877475910
  2. "A Tribute to Dr. Wayne Woolley" Lethbridge Herald (February 25, 1941): 11. via Newspapers.com
  3. M. Y. Khan and Farha Khan, Principles of Enzyme Technology (PHI Learning 2015): 211. ISBN 9788120350410
  4. George Washington Comer, A History of the Rockefeller Institute, 1901-1953: Origins and Growth (Rockefeller University Press 1965): 374-378.
  5. Patricia Mack Whitaker-Azmitia, "The Discovery of Serotonin and its Role in Neuroscience" Neuropsychopharmacology 21(1999): 2S-8S. doi:10.1016/S0893-133X(99)00031-7
  6. D. Wayne Woolley, "Involvement of the Hormone Serotonin in Emotion and Mind" in David C. Glass, ed., Neurophysiology and Emotion (Rockefeller University Press 1967): 108-116.
  7. Gaynor C. Wild and John G. Hildebrand, Dilworth W. Woolley, 1914-1966 (National Academy of Sciences 2014).
  8. Brent Stockwell, The Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines (Columbia University Press 2013): 169. ISBN 9780231152136
  9. Walter Sneader, Drug Discovery: A History (John Wiley & Sons 2005): 254. ISBN 9780471899792
  10. "In Memoriam: R. Bruce Merrifield" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine American Peptide Society (2005).
  11. "Canadian Honored" Ottawa Journal (December 30, 1940): 15. via Newspapers.com
  12. "Sightless Scientist" Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune (August 13, 1948): 1. via Newspapers.com
  13. "Wayne Woolley Named Eli Lilly Award Winner". Chemical & Engineering News. 26 (16): 1148–1149. 1948. doi:10.1021/cen-v026n016.p1148.
  14. Thomas H. Jukes, "Dilworth Wayne Woolley, 1914-1966, A Biographical Sketch" Journal of Nutrition 104(1974): 509-511.
  15. Dilworth Wayne Woolley, A Study of Antimetabolites (Wiley 1952).
  16. Dilworth Wayne Woolley, The Biochemical Bases of Psychoses, or, the Serotonin Hypothesis about Mental Diseases (Wiley 1962).
  17. "Dr. D. Wayne Woolley Dies" Braille Monitor (November 1966).
  18. Gaynor C. Wild and John G. Hildebrand, "Dilworth W. Woolley, 1914-1966: A Biographical Memoir" National Academy of Sciences (2014).
  19. A Guide to the D. Wayne Woolley papers Rockefeller University Faculty FA205.
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